The Google people on this site say it's good for innovation if companies copy each other.

In part I agree.

Samsung saw Apple's iPad took off and they wanted their share and made their own tablet. That's fine with me and good for competition, customer choice.

Now Apple claims they copied the iPad, like its shape. I think it's kinda hard to make a tablet that doesn't look like a tablet. I don't you should view it as a tablet, but as a screen, which there are a lot of. Touching it with your fingers, making gestures should be fine too, it's the most logical way of interacting, like a pen also would be (but not as convenient when it comes to multi gestures).

Where I think Samsung went too far is when it made a number of icons look like iOS ones and even copied the packaging. There is no need for that, unless you want customers to think a Galaxy Tab is an iPad too.

IMO Apple should have asked the judge to force Samsung to change the icons and packaging. No need for an import ban or any fines.

You cannot be serious? You just described a category of devices, not the device itself. The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts, thats called value add. Apple adds value by their slick industrial design and tight SW/HW integration. It does not matter what Google and the Free Software guys want, theft it is theft. Samsumg did not merely borrow from the look and feel, they stole it, pure and simple. The Galaxy may not be an exact replica, but its close enough to mistake if for an iPad just a few feet away. That should be the criteria.

It's wrong if consumers have a hard time to identify what it is, but it's hard to make a tablet computer that hasn't a rectangular screen. If it's black and rectangular most stuff will look like an iPad to some people. But hey, most VCR's were black flat boxes.

I think the UI and its icons are more an area where it shouldn't be alright to copy stuff, like Samsung did. This would make a lot of people believe it's an iPad.

SEE! Apple had already invented the black shiny bezel long before they announced..., er, uh... Oh. Sorry, but it appears that the link actually shows a CrunchPad prototype from six months before the Ipad was first announced. My bad...

There you go! Apple was showing the rounded, flush, black bezel long before they... Um... sorry again. It seems that the device shown in the link is actually an LG Prada phone, which was winning design awards four months before the Iphone was announced.

Gotcha! Sorry Android fanboys! This icon array is an exclusive Apple concept! We are the superior... crap... Evidently, this image is a screenshot of Palm OS (from a touchscreen phone), which has been around for about a decade prior to the Iphone.

Nevermind.
/sarcasm

Apple fanboys! How can you think with a straight face that Apple has any exclusive rights to a touchscreen device with a rounded, shiny black, flush bezel? Such a device was demonstrated in a video in 1994. I'll spell-out the date just in case the bolded number didn't make it through the fog of the RDF -- nineteen ninety-four!

And you think that adding an array of icons makes an Iphone/Ipad unique?

Really.

Samsung's motivation is immaterial -- Apple did not invent touchscreen devices with an icon array and a flush, shiny black bezel with rounded corners.

The Google people on this site say it's good for innovation if companies copy each other.

There's no such thing as "Google people." The only folks who invest their identity and emotion into a product to such a psycho degree are the Apple fanboys. The arguments here are often simply "Apple Fanboys vs. 'those with common sense.'"

Where I think Samsung went too far is when it made a number of icons look like iOS ones and even copied the packaging. There is no need for that, unless you want customers to think a Galaxy Tab is an iPad too.

The "look" of icons is often very subjective. For the sake of this discussion, it's not even worth comparing the two sets of icons. If push came to shove, Samsung could just use other icons and its product would function just as well.

The packaging? It's okay for Samsung to use a box, right? Do they have the right to use a white box?

The sad fact, and I've said it on osnews many years ago, is that Apple fanboys are the worst amongst the bunch. They will defend Apple to the death, and bad mouth anyone who dares criticise Apple or stand up to their legal bullying.

Go google! Go Samsung. Kick the shit out of Apple in the courts.

Dave

PS this sort of BS that Apple is doing is EXACTLY why I believe software patents, and indeed all patents, should be bloody well banned. They encourage monopolisation of the market, and are directly anti competitive in nature, and they stifle innovation and consumer markets. The sooner they are banned globally, the better for all consumders, for all businesses.